D.
[4] Ablutions before prayers.
[5] The first section of the Koran.
[6] The Imperial Treasury.
[7] The part of Stambul inhabited by the Greeks.
[8] Companies of horse.
[9] Tablets indicating the direction in which Mecca lies.
[10] "God be for ever gracious to him."
[11] Believer.
[12] Unbeliever.
[13] Anti-Christ.
[14] The prescribed almsgiving.
[15] Voluntary almsgiving.
[16] Peter the Great. The allusion is to the Peace of the Pruth.
CHAPTER XII.
HUMAN HOPES.
A time will come when the star has risen so high that it can rise no
higher, and perchance learns to know that before long it must begin its
inevitable descent!...
All Halil Patrona's wildest dreams had been realised. There he stood at
the very apex of sovereignty, whence the course of empires, the destiny
of worlds can be controlled. Ministers of State were pulled down or
lifted up at his bidding, armies were sent against foreign powers as he
directed, princes were strengthened on their thrones because Halil
Patrona wished it, and the great men of the empire lay in the dust at
his feet.
For whole days at a time he sat reading the books of the Ottoman
chroniclers, the famous Rashid and the wise Chelbizade, and after that
he would pore over maps and charts and draw lines of different colours
across them in all directions, and dot them with dots which he alone
understood the meaning of. And those lines and dots stretched far, far
away beyond the borders of the empire, right into the midst of Podolia
and the Ukraine.
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